


Northwest Passage

by ShinobiCyrus



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: (just a smidgen), Abusive Parents, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Developing Friendships, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Faustian Bargain, Gen, Mind Games, evil triangles, how else do you describe disciplining you child, mild psychological horror, with a freaking BELL?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-21 11:30:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4827566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShinobiCyrus/pseuds/ShinobiCyrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a price for Greatness, and Pacifica learns that being the most powerful and influential family in a town like Gravity Falls comes with a very steep price.</p><p>Now she has to confront family secrets, bells, dream demons, sleep deprivation, and whatever weird maybe-kinda-sorta friendship she has going on with the Pine Twins. Actually, y'know what, forget that last one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. GSV XLMGIZXG

It was a week after Pacifica had opened the party gates before her father spoke to her again.

She’d watched from the top of the stairs the morning after while he bossed around the servants and freaked as if riff-raff getting mud on the carpet or greasy fingerprints on the imported wood paneling was seriously the  _worst_ thing that had happened last night.

Pacifica knew better. It wasn’t about letting in the townsfolk, or the mess they’d made. She’d  _disobeyed_. Her Father had rung the Bell and she…she still did it. She’d saved Dipper and Mabel and everyone at the party, and none of that mattered because Pacifica had disobeyed the Bell, and that meant she had to be punished. That was the rules.

Sometimes her girlfriends Tiffany and Arabella griped to her about their parents taking away their credit cards or even their cell phones. None of Preston or Priscilla Northwest’s punishments were that provincial. No, she was a Northwest. They had a “reputation” to keep. Pacifica’s phone was always six-months ahead of anything on the market, and her Ultra-Platinum card kept her closets stocked with only the latest fashions.

That didn’t mean they let her enjoy it.

Her mother could take her on a day-long shopping trip, and all Priscilla would have to do was glance at the dressing-room mirror and comment, “I don’t think you have the  _figure_ for that one, darling.”

They could get a dog for her birthday, and then make Pacifica leave it with the house-sitter at their vacation home in Malibu.

They could invest in professional trainers for her putting and never make it to a single one of her tournaments.

Her father could say nothing, and Pacifica would make herself sick with dread.

She knew that it was just part of the punishment. The waiting. It made her afraid to step out of her room, to even be in the same wing as one of them. Quietly sitting at the farthest ends of the dinner table was literally torture. A week of not being able to get to sleep because that meant  _tomorrow would happen._ Chiming bells in her head kept the frustrated scream lodged in her throat.

She almost started wanting it. She didn’t care anymore. Only if they would just. Get. It.  _Over_ with.

It’d be easier if it wasn’t stupid summer. At boarding school Pacifica was Queen, the Alpha-predator. She had a flock of girls devoted to her. Even the girls that hated her wanted to be her. Nothing could touch her, there.

At home she was just weak.

It was almost a relief when her door opened while she was laying in bed not-sleeping, the light from the hall spilling in and framing her father’s dark silhouette.

“You have ten minutes to get dressed and meet me down in my study. Make it something presentable.”

He slammed the door shut, and Pacifica rushed and fumbled out of her nightgown before it occurred to her to clap on a light.

There was no time for makeup. She picked out an Egyptian Blue dress that went nicely with her hair, pulled on the matching gloves that went up her elbows, and slipped a pair of boots that she could run in.

Most of the servants were confined to their own separate wing for the night. The empty halls were filled with stretched shadows; her footsteps beat too loudly in her ears. She tried to not think about ghosts, or the paintings’ eyes following her, or red dripping from the mouths of the family hunting trophies.

Her father’s study was in the oldest section of the house- and she made a point of avoiding it. There was always a smell of must and old wood that was distinct from anyplace else in the manor. Pacifica had always hated it; her visits there never ended well.

She turned a corner, passed the creepy tapestry with the burning tree and the people bowing to a dark pyramid, stopped at the thick oak doors and knocked exactly three times.

“Enter.”

Pacifica inhaled, put on her best Northwest face, and pushed over the heavy doors.

Maybe the study would have been considered big and luxurious when it was first built, but compared to all the remodeling and additions to the manor since then, to Pacifica it was pretty…dull. It was windowless, with a few shelves crammed with dusty books, a small painting of the canyon of Gravity Falls before it was settled, a moose’s head hanging off the wall that Pacifica did  _not_  make eye contact with.

Preston had his back to her, looking into the undersized fireplace with the bust of Nathaniel Northwest on the mantelpiece, beard thick and eyes intense and accusing.

She jumped when he finally spoke. “This family’s reputation has gotten a few…blemishes this year, hasn’t it?” Pacifica swallowed but dutifully said nothing, not sure if it was a direct question. He went on, “Now we have all these revisionists obsessing about the ‘truth’ and ‘accuracy’ of trite little details instead of focusing on what really matters. Just because Nathaniel Northwest didn’t ‘technically’ found Gravity Falls doesn’t change the fact this family built it with our bare hands. Toiled and sacrificed to keep this town prospering for one hundred and fifty years.”

He turned his head, one side of his face almost red from the firelight. “What do you think matters more, Pacifica?”

She knew this script. Pacifica clasped her hands in front of her and said, “That the Northwests stayed loyal to the town.”

“Exactly. We could have packed up and made for greener pastures- cut our losses when the coal mine dried up, or when the sawmills started failing. But we stayed, weathered through the burdens like Northwests. Because we have an  _obligation_ , because Gravity Falls is special.”

“This town is ours. Someday, Pacifica, it will be yours. And there are important things you have to learn before that can happen.” He reached into his jacket, and she almost stepped backwards until he produced a golden key, instead of the Bell. Turning back to the mantel, he pulled the busts’ head back on hinges, uncovering an eye-shaped keyhole where his forehead would be. It fit perfectly, and something clicked when it turned.

One of the bookshelves swung open like a door. Pacifica could only see cobblestone stairs leading down, into the dark beneath the manor.

Her father grabbed an antique miner’s lantern from a bookshelf and lit it. “Follow me.”

Pacifica followed him down the steps, glad that she’d decided to wear boots instead of heels. The crooked, winding passage was so narrow, her father’s shoulders were squeezed by the wall.

She hugged her bare shoulders. “Daddy…what is all this?”

“You have working eyes, Pacifica. You know that thing happen in this town that are not…natural.”

Like a civilization of murder-crazy mini golf-ball people living under the Putt Hutt, gravity turning itself off- or vengeful ghosts with axes lodged in their heads.

He noted her silence. “It’s smart of you to not mention it out loud. This town has a habit of correcting people that are too stupid to keep their mouths shut.”

The stairs leveled off into a small chamber. Pacifica’s boots sank into soft earth, and the stone walls were braced with cobwebs and timbers. At the end of the cramped chamber was a small wood altar, like from an old church, covered with dust deformed, half-melted candles. The front was engraved with an eye at the center of a pyramid.

Preston hung the lantern on the back wall and handed Pacifica a silver lighter from his jacket. “Light them.”

She had to pull off one of her gloves by her teeth to flick the ligher alive. Hand shaking, she held the flame up to the candlewicks, one after another, until wax started dribbling down the sides.

“Stand here, and no matter what happens do not move,” he warned her, and went to the altar himself. She couldn’t see what exactly he did, but something clicked, and he pulled out a dusty scroll from a hidden panel that had opened up just below the All-Seeing Eye.

Down in the cold, dank chamber beneath the manor, with only the light from a lantern and a few measly candles, her father rolled open the scroll and started reading from it in a clear voice. “ _Triangulum, entangulum. Veneforis dominus ventium.”_

A cool, moaning breeze blew at Pacifica’s hair. The candleflames flicked.

“ _Veneforis venetisarium! Nostrum tempus advenio. Pretium erit solvi!”_

Without warning, Preston flinched like something invisible had hit him. The scroll fell onto the dirt as Pacifica watched her father double over in pain, clutching his sides and gritting his teeth. She wanted to go to him, try and help, but she was more afraid of disobeying than of whatever was happening.

“…Daddy?”

He shot up, whole body stiff, and he looked at her with eyes that were solid blue fire. “GSV KIRXV NFHG YV KZRW! GSV KIRXV NFHG YV KZRW!  **HSV RH NRMV**!”

Pacifica blinked. That is, her eyes closed, and she lived in that moment of darkness that everyone experiences but never notices. She hung blind in the dark, aware of the air rushing down her mouth and nose, inflating her lungs, almost felt her blood circulate thickly through the twining, pulsing tubes under her skin.

Her eyes opened to grainy gray, like all the color had been bled out of the world. Except for her arms, her dress, her father- their bodies were still color; a jarring contrast against the monochrome.

A black triangle had appeared. Not floating, just…there, like someone had spray painted the stuff that made up the air, or cut a whole in the universe. Except it was nothing like that at all. It was an image drawn on her eyeballs; black, flat, and impossible.

Light that didn’t brighten the dim world or throw any shadows poured from it’s edges, an eclipse that left the impression of something behind that triangle would burn Pacifica through her eye sockets until she was a hollowed-out husk. There was a flash- she didn’t blink- and the light…hardened over the shape. The triangle was had turned yellow, a line sliced across the top and split into a huge, bulging eye, slitted like a cat’s.

The triangle had become a…thing. A body. Lines that were a…lack of light formed a grid pattern like a checkered suit, sprouted the black shape of a bow-tie. Flat flimsy arms and legs, and a small, almost laughable top-hat.

Then it spoke. Oily words poured into Pacifica’s head even though she knew she wasn’t hearing anything with her ears. AGAIN? MAN, AM I POP-U- _LAR_ THIS SUMMER! It floated to her father, huge eye level with his face. WELL, IF IT ISN’T MY OL’ PAL PRESTO! IS IT THIRTEEN YEARS ALREADY? TIME SURE DOES FLY WHEN YOU EXIST OUTSIDE OF A LIMITED UNIVERSE! HEH-HEH, I’M JUST KIDDING, TIME ISN’T REAL!

The big eye swiveled down at her. Pacifica felt needles into the the back of her head. AND THIS MUST BE THE NEWST LITTLE NORTHWEST, AM I RIGHT? The Triangle thing crossed its arms behind its back and circled around her like it was browsing merchandise. HMM. YEAH, I CAN WORK WITH THIS. 'SUP, BLONDIE? NAME’S BILL CIPHER. It tipped its hat, and even though gravity kept her feet on the floor, Pacifica cried out when the entire room titled hard sideways, flipping her guts with vertigo, until it returned the hat back onto its triangle-point head. CHARMED, I’M SURE.

Pacifica shrunk back. “Daddy? W-what  _is_  this?”

“Manners, Pacifica,” he reproached her. “Mister Cipher here-”

PLEASE, it waved its hand.  _MISTER_  CIPHER IS THE CRAWLING CHAOS BETWEEN THOUGHT AND MATTER! CALL ME BILL.

Pacifica saw her father shuffle, personally knew that frown of disapproval. What she’d never seen before was him trying to hide it.

The thing calling itself Bill saw it too. AW, COME ON, PRESTO! WE SHOULD BE ON A FIRST-NAME BASIS BY NOOOOW, RIGHT? Its skinny arm stretched halfway across the room and nudged him with a pointy elbow. EH? EH? EH? The eye closed and slowly opened. Its arms snapped back to hang at its side. I AM BAD AT WINKING.

Preston cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Yes. Well. As I was saying, Mister… _Bill_  here has been a silent benefactor of the Northwest family for generations.”

HA-HA, YEAH, THAT OL’ TREE-CHOMPER WAS A RIOT. Bill yanked absently at the air, pulling out a matching yellow cane and twirled it around. Y'KNOW, YOU HUMANS ARE A LOT LESS BORING WHEN YOU SHUCK OFF YOUR WEIRD LITTLE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS LIKE MORALS OR SANITY.

“Our family contract with Bill stipulates that we Northwests must summon him once every thirteen years to…renew our commitment. In exchange, he uses his power and influence to help us preserve our family’s position.”

Pacifica raised a manicured eyebrow. “ _That_  has influence?”

Bill posed like a swimsuit model. RECOGNIZE ME FROM THE BACK OF THE ONE-DOLLAR  _BILL_?

“Money  _goes_  that low?”

“So the legends say.” Preston said.

“What about mom?” Pacifica looked around the gray room. “Why isn’t she here?”

Bill’s body flashed a series of pictures- or maybe became a window where the images blurred past while the eyeball continued to stare. A family tree, growing and branching, red blood cells under a microscope, swirling helices, four jumbled letters repeating over and over. OH, SHE’S NOT REALLY A NORTHWEST. WE’RE TALKING ABOUT BLOODLINES, KID. YOUR ENTIRE EXISTENCE REDUCED TO A RANDOM CHAIN OF CHEMICALS! It chuckled like the dividing cells on its body tickled. HEEHEHEH. COOL, RIGHT? Its body flickered back to the checkered suit. HEY, HOW IS HOTLIPS DOING, ANYHOW?

Pacifica looked at her father in askance. “Hotlips?”

“I think we should focus on why we’re here,” Preston suggested firmly as he dared.

Without shoulders, Bill shrugged with its hands. SURE, WHATEVER YOU SAY, PAL. LISTEN KID, I’M GONNA BREAK IT DOWN REEEAL SIMPLE. ME AND YOUR ANCESTORS HAVE HAD A PRETTY NICE DEAL GOING ON SO FAR. YOU GET TO STAY IN THE LAP OF LUXURY, AND IN EXCHANGE YOU DO THE OCCASIONAL… Its eye burned the shame shade of blue her father’s had.  **FAVOR.**

If there was one thing her parents had drilled into Pacifica, is that a Northwest should never sign under the dotted line until you read all of the fine print. “What…kind of favor?”

JUST A LITTLE SIDE-PROJECT I’VE BEEN WORKING ON. DON’T WORRY, I’VE SAVED A SPECIAL PLACE FOR ALL YOU NORTHWESTS FOR WHAT IS TO COME, SO YOU’RE REALLY HELPING YOURSELVES! It noticed her unease. DON’T WORRY SO MUCH, KID. IT’S YOUR FIRST TIME, SO I’LL GIVE YOU AN EASY ONE. ALL I NEED FROM YOU IS…A BOOK.

“A book? That’s it?”

A RARE AND VALUABLE BOOK. ONE OF A KIND! WELL- TECHNICALLY THREE. LUCKY FOR YOU I ALREADY KNOW WHERE YOU CAN FIND IT, SO THE JOB’S HALF-DONE ALREADY!

Bill’s body showed her a man’s hand- a freakish one with a sixth finger, jotting down random numbers into crinkly pages, then closing the book. It had a red cover with gold handprint marked with the number Three. Pacifica recognized it instantly. “Dipper’s weird journal? That’s what you want?”

OH SO YOU ALREADY KNOW PINE-TREE? Dipper on his bed reading the journal, Dipper chewing on a pen trying to decipher a page full of jumbled letters and numbers, Pacifica fighting with him over the journal to keep him from tracking mud on her parents’ favorite carpet pattern. _THAT_ MAKES THIS SIMPLER.

“I don’t think Dipper would ever sell it, no matter how much money I offered him. That book seemed really important to him.”

OH YEAH, DEFINITELY NOT, Bill agreed blithely. THE ONLY WAY TO GET THAT JOURNAL IS TAKE IT!

Pacifica shook her head. “I don’t…I don’t know if- I mean, he _helped_ us, he-” He was the only one that thought-

“Pacifica,” Preston warned her.

I’M NOT ASKING FOR MUCH, BLONDIE, Bill’s arm stretched and snaked around her shoulders. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO TO IS SCHMOOZE UP WITH THE PINES, EARN THEIR TRUST, MAYBE LEARN A FEW OF THEIR DEEP PERSONAL SECRETS, AND STEAL PINE-TREE’S MOST TREASURED POSSESSION. COMPARED TO ALL THE OTHER HORRIBLE THINGS YOUR FAMILY HAS DONE, THIS SHOULD BE A CINCH!

She cringed. The worst thing was how completely right it was. Lying to the Pines and stealing Dipper’s journal wouldn’t even  _register_  on the Northwest family history. What was another snowball in the avalanche?

Bill pulled out an oversized pocketwatch that ticked loudly. OH YEAH, AND I’M KIND OF RUNNING ON A TIME TABLE, SO YOU HAVE EXACTLY THIRTY-FOUR HOURS, FIFTY-SIX MINUTES, AND TWENTY-NINE SECONDS TO GET THAT JOURNAL STARTING… **NOW!**

“Wha- wait! No!” Bill flashed with such a sudden intensity that Pacifica had to rub the triangle-shaped spots out of her eyes. She blinked owlishly. Color had returned to the room, even the dull earth colors of dirt and rock seemed too sharp. There was no sign Bill anywhere, if he even had been there. If it wasn’t for the freshly melted wax puddle around the shrunken candles, Pacifica could have written the whole thing off as some seriously warped dream.

She turned her back on the altar and the unnerving triangle-icon. “Father,” she used the same tone he had used on her a hundred times before and hated herself for it. “What  _was_ that thing?”

“That thing,” he answered coolly, “Is the reason you are living in the biggest mansion in the state instead of some hovel in the woods.”

“So that’s the secret to our success? Lying, cheating, stealing, and making deals with…with…crazy monster triangles?!”

“My father brought me down here, as did his father, and his father before that. The only reason I brought you here was because I was required to; just as you are required to  _do as you are told_.”

“No!” Pacifica stomped her boot on the dirt. “I’m not going to double-cross the only people in this whole town that don’t think I’m as horrible as  _you_  just because that thing-”

Preston reached down and grabbed under her jaw, cutting Pacifica off as he squeezed just enough to hurt. “You listen to me, you insolent, ungrateful little brat. You are a Northwest, and it’s time you learned that there is a price for Greatness. The only choice you have is whether you pay that price with some boy’s silly little book, or Mr. Cipher  _extracts_ that pricefrom you, instead. Those are your only two options. Do I make myself clear?”

Pacifica bowed her head and nodded.

“I’m sorry? What was that?”

“…yes, Father.” She managed.

“Good.” He released her. Pacifica resisted the urge to feel her neck. “Now run along to bed, you have a busy day tomorrow.” He checked his watch. “Well… _today_.”

Pacifica obeyed. She ran out of the chamber, stumbled and blindly felt her way up the steps, ran out of the secret passage in the wall, out of the study, shut her eyes when she passed the horrible tapestry; just ran and ran and ran, not caring that her boots were probably tracking dirt on the finely polished floor and century-old carpeting. She ran until she finally made it to her room, panting and sweating, and slammed her door shut, because there were no locks in the Northwest Manor.

She jumped into bed, not bothering to take off her nice dress or her boots, and hid herself under her blankets, not sleeping, not dreaming, and trying not to hear the soft, distant noise ticking of the grandfather clock down the hall.

She would have preferred the bell.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> R ZN MLG INMRHXRVMG, YFG R PMLD Z OLG


	2. Unhappy Girl

Her mother was absent from the table when Pacifica went down for breakfast.

This wasn’t all that unusual. Priscilla sometimes stayed in bed as late as noon, coming down in her robe and last night’s makeup to take a brunch of vermouth and orange juice while the rest of the house was dressed and preparing for lunch.

It was just a coincidence, Pacifica told herself. She hadn’t even been there, last night. She didn't _know_.

Pacifica couldn’t manage more than a little appetite for her cantaloupe and granola-yogurt. Her eyes felt like dense globs of jello in her sockets, heavy and feeling every aching pump of blood to her head. She had a butler bring her a macchiato from the Italian brewer, hoping it could clear away the muddling fog in her brain.

She could almost- almost convince herself that last night had been a dream. Wished it. Just her subconscious doling out a punishment where her parents were still biding for a more appropriate response to disobeying and opening the house gates to the rabble.

Almost, until Preston lowered his newspaper. “Any plans today, dear?”

Pacifica froze. A surge of panic like another shot of espresso, her face hot and guilty while servants busied around them. It was a perfectly normal question to ask; of course he wouldn’t mention last night where the help could hear. They didn't know what was underneath the Northwest Manor.

“I-I was thinking of going into town for the day."

“Hm. Just be sure to mind curfew.” He went back to his paper, ignoring her and his egg white omelet.

Her ‘curfew.’ Right. She wished she had marked the time better. At her best guess, she had maybe thirty hours before her time was up. Either she delivered that journal fast, or she’d find out what some psychotic geometry homework considered fair 'compensation.’

Pacifica left the table with her breakfast more moved around than really eaten. At least the caffeine had helped clear her head. Experience told her that she would probably regret it later, but she was no stranger to a little hunger pangs for the greater good.

Her morning routine helped calm down her nerves, a bit. Pacifica showered, washed and conditioned into her hair, blow dried, combed it, and applied a little extra eyeshadow to hide the tired, dark circles around her eyes.

It took a little longer to hunt down an outfit that qualified for roughing it at the Pines’ shack, inconspicuous enough that people wouldn’t recognize her from a distance, but still fashionable enough to be caught wearing. She went with leather hiking boots, a skirt that perfectly balanced daringly short but still classy, leggings to keep away the mosquitoes, and a hooded sweater. A bit hot for summer, but it was baggy and had a big pocket in the front; not like she could stuff Dipper’s journal down her blouse like a shoplifter.

She evaluated herself in the mirror. All it needed was a two-hundred dollar pair of sunglasses she had lying around. There, perfect.

Pacifica had her driver bring around one the family’s less conspicuous SUVs, plain black with darkened windows, not even monogrammed with the family crest.

Arturo had driven her to the Pines’ last time. What already felt like months ago instead of only last week. He was quiet and always discreet. If he thought it was strange to be driving her back to that mosquito-infested shed in woods, he kept it to himself.

Pacifica sat on plush leather seats in the back, medicating the aching tiredness in her head with sips of mineral water. In downtown Gravity Falls, Main Street was still a mess of orange traffic cones, men in hardhats with heavy machinery working to right up a town that had literally flipped on its head. All from that _"earthquake."_ That was what they called those thirty seconds where Pacifica had to frantically hold onto one of the railings on the stairs while everything from the furniture, the good silver, and the staff were floating up to the ceiling before it all came crashing to the ground like a gravity switch had been flicked.

She propped her elbow against the armrest and watched the town go by behind through the anonymity of tinted windows. An upside-down semi truck, cabin crushed like a crumpled can from its own weight, had been dragged to the side of the road, still waiting to turned back onto its wheels so it could be towed away. An earthquake, just like all the guests at the party laughed about someone spiking the punch after  being terrorized by a taxidermy zoo and then very briefly being trees. Just like bad dreams about insane triangles.

Pacifica blinked with heavy eyelids. A bird perched on a crooked telephone pole opened its wings and took off. Except....no. Something wasn't right. The bird was flapping sluggishly. All along the street, people moved like the air was molasses, cars crawled on the road metal slugs, wrecking balls swung slow as drifting balloons.

Pacifica took off her sunglasses. It wasn’t the dark lenses, or the darkened window. The entire world had dulled to grainy shades of gray.

_Oh no._

Her reflection in the window slowly swiveled its head, colorless except for the golden blonde of her hair. Pacifica stared into eyes that weren’t hers, cat-slit pupils and blinking out of sync with her. It grinned, manic and toothy and impossibly wide. She threw herself away from the window, pressing against the other side of the SUV to put as much distance between that… _thing_  with her face as possible.

“Hey, Kid,” It moved her lips with a voice like mercury pouring in her ear. “Why the LONG FACE?”

Pacifica watched her face warp like a funhouse mirror, stretched tall and then flattened, smile getting wider and wider until her teeth were engorged bricks. He eyes squeezed together until they fused into a single veiny orb. The window rippled like a pond, and from her distorted face Bill Cipher smoothly surfaced into the back of the SUV, flat triangle body glowing gold but not giving off any light at all.

WHOA, NICE RIDE, its two-dimensional hand felt the leather seats. NOTHING SAYS DELUXE LIKE CUP HOLDERS AND THE FLAYED SKINS OF LIVESTOCK, AM I RIGHT?

Pacifica glanced at Arturo in the driver’s seat, frozen in place like an oblivious mannequin. “How are you- what did you do?”

HEY, DOES THIS THING HAVE A SNACK BAR? I’M A SUCKER FOR CASHEWS WITH THE FANCY PEANUT GUY. It pulled out a monocle from Somewhere and held it over its eye, posing and dapper with his cane and top-hat. GET IT? CAUSE I’M NUTS! AAAHAHAHAHA!

She stared. There was no real good way to come to terms with a world where peanuts were now menacing occult symbols. “My parents don’t let me have food in the car.”

Bill deflated. JEEZ, TOUGH ROOM, it tossed the monocle aside and started spinning its cane in sudden starts and stops, like jumping clock hands. ALREADY STARTING EARLY, HUH? SMART MOVE, CONSIDERING YOU ONLY HAVE TWENTY-EIGHT HOURS AND FORTY-ONE MINUTES BEFORE YOUR DEADLINE IS UP.

Pacifica met his eye resentfully. She’d had a rough night, an awful morning, and a peruse through her calendar had her scheduled for totally crappy day. She was  _so_  not in the mood to have this stupid Planters rip-off screwing with her. “Yeah, see? I’m taking care of it. I don’t need you eying me over my shoulder and throwing me off.”

AW, COME ON BLONDIE, NO NEED TO BE LIKE THAT. I’VE BEEN PALS WITH SEVEN GENERATIONS OF NORTHWESTS, AND I THINK WE CAN BE TOO! HEY, GIRLS LIKE SHINY STUFF, RIGHT? HERE, HAVE A PEARL MADE OF EXISTENTIAL TERROR!

Pacifica caught the thing Bill dropped into her palm on reflex. It was grape-sized, shimmering nacreous black like a dollop of frozen oil. It burned cold the second it touched her skin, chilling her nerves to shivers and seeping midnight thoughts deep into the wrinkles and crannies of her brain.

_We didn’t remember our birth and we won’t remember our death_

She was paralyzed, her body just a mold of spongy warm meat hardening on the inside. Sweat damped her hair, collected just under her nose like mildew

_we’re just clumsy things stumbling through a mess of mayfly moments trying not to think about thoughtless oblivion_

Pacifica let it drop, watched it break apart like brittle ash before it hit the ground. She looking down at her boots, sucked in gasping breaths like the air in the back of the car was too hard to process in her lungs, too thick with pressing humidity. Her face overheated with panic and Bill laughed like it had just gotten her with a joke-hand buzzer that wouldn’t be giving her sleepless nights for weeks.

She snarled, picked up her water bottle and threw it right into its stupid eye. Bill blinked, and the water bottled was swallowed between his eyelids like a mouth.

NICE ARM! It tipped its top hat to her, then reached deeper into the hat than its size should have allowed. I WAS AFRAID PRESTO’S LITTLE 'OBEDIENCE TRAINING’ WOULD TAKE THE FIGHT OUTTA YOU. It pulled out the water bottle, squeezed and crushed the plastic, remaking it. A little slight of hand and Bill jangled a shiny new bell. Pacifica’s insides shrank and withered. She cringed, but still held her ground. YOU’VE STILL GOT SOME SPUNK KID. I LIKE THAT.

The bell stopped ringing. Pacifica simultaneously relaxed and nursed a kernel of anxiety, prickling and impossible to reach like she’d swallowed it down the wrong pipe and lodged it somewhere in her heart.

She was completely caught off guard when Bill lashed its cane at her, hooked the handle around her neck like a python. Only it wasn’t a cane around her throat, it was a dog dollar. Bill tugged hard and she choked. Its eye and bulged, huge and bloody red and piercing into something vulnerable inside that she couldn’t name. She stare into it and saw her own strangled, terrified expression.

 **JUST DON’T FORGET WHO’S HOLDING YOU** **R** **LEASH.**

One of them blinked first. She wasn’t sure which. Then the collar was gone, and Bill’s eye was white and winking at her cheekily. BY THE WAY, YOU SHOULD REALLY REMEMBER TO PUT ON YOUR SEAT BELT.

“…what?”

Rubber squealed. Pacifica jerked in her seat and almost hit the back of the drive seat with her face.

Arturo glanced away from the tractor rumbling across the road in front of them. “Sorry, Ms. Pacifica. This construction is a mess. We should be there in twenty minutes or so.”

Pacifica mumbled something about him about driving more carefully. She buckled her seat belt and laid back in the seat. Remembered the water bottle in time to find it glugging the last of its contents into the soaked upholstery.

* * *

 

Pacifica didn’t fall back asleep during the rest of the ride. Bill may not have been real, but the sweat had been, and she spent the time correcting her makeup like warpaint until she heard the telltale crunch of tires on dirt and gravel. “Here’s fine.”

Arturo braked smoother this time. She gave her face one last cursory check in her compact before snapping it shut. She climbed out of the car, slammed the door, and walked to the driver side window. “You can go back. I’ll call you if- _when_  I need a ride back.”

“Yes, ma'am.” He tipped his cap before rolling up the window and u-turned back down the road. Pacifica watched his tail-lights fade into the woods before she headed down that last bend to the Pines’ shack.

Wow. It was even more than a dump than last time.

A tree had toppled over the house with its dirty roots hanging in the air. The 'Mystery’ part of the sign was nearly broken in half, barely held together with flimsy planks of wood, and there were probably more shingles on the ground than on the A-frame’s actual roof. A sign nailed to nearby tree said: 'Temporarily Closed for Repairs.’

Yeah, that was optimistic. She went up the creaky patio steps to the door.

There was no longer a wall.

Tarps had been thrown up to curtain the massive hole where Pacifica was pretty sure she remembered a wall and a door, which Dipper had slammed in her face before.  There was still a door, but on a rickety standalone frame like the ones put up in plays that were too poor to afford real sets. She could hear the chatter of a TV clearly from the other side of the tarp.

Raising her fist, Pacifica knocked. She crossed her arms and tapped her foot impatiently. Movement rustled the tarp as a shadow passed, and the Pines’…servant? Was that what he was? Whatever. The chubby guy in the dirty question mark shirt opened the door, took one look at Pacifica, and cried out in a panic.

“AH! Scary golf girl!” and slammed the door in her face.

His shadow was still visible on the tarp. Pacifica made out Mabel asking, “Soos? Who was it?”

“Mabel, I think your nemesis has tracked you down to enact her revenge!”

“Nemesis? Since when do I have a-” She stopped, and then Dipper’s voice said with hers. “ _Pacifica_!”

Two small shadows pattered past the larger one. The door swung open and the Pines Twins crammed the doorframe, gaping at her.

Surprisingly, Dipper beat his loudmouth sister to the punch. “Pacifica! You’re here!” The excitement immediately faded. “Again. Is everything…” He looked her over uncertainly. “Okay?”

Pacifica didn’t like that expression on his face. At least back when it was with open disdain, she knew the script. She flipped her hair back dismissively. “Of course it is. Why wouldn’t everything be okay?”

“Last time you showed up here we almost got killed by a ghost hell-bent on revenge against your entire family.”

Oh. Right. “Well that was all handled- no thanks to you and that stupid mirror. Seriously hat-hair, you literally had like, _one_ job.”

Dipper fumed quietly. Mabel raised an eyebrow. “So…why  _are_ you here?”

“I-” Pacifica faltered. Up all night, and it had never occurred to her to come up with a believable excuse for why she would come back. But she was a Northwest. The words flowed out on their own, and a nagging sensation worried how easily she could lie on-command. “Normally I wouldn’t bother, but ever since that earthquake the mall closed and everything remotely interesting in this backwater is either boarded up.” She inspected her nails, the portrait of bored apathy. “The mansion’s fine of course because- duh- it’s a  _mansion_ , but even that gets boring after being cooped up in there for a week with nothing to do. So I just thought I’d…”

She stopped, because the Pines gave each other incredulous looks like they were having a silent conversation. Okay, they were totally not buying it.

“Look, are you gonna let me in or not?” Pacifica snapped irritably. “I’ve got better things to do than stand on what’s left of this hovel.”

Dipper's brow furrowed. “So go do that stuff.” And slammed the door on her face. Again.

Mabel howled on the other side of the door. “Hoooooo snap somebody call da police we got a arsonist dealin’ out _buuurns_!”

“Nice,” Dipper said. The fistbump looked like their shadows’ hands fused.

“I-” Pacifica throat closed up. She wanted to be mad, she should have been furious- how dare he just. Just.  _Do_  that to her! Only...nothing came out. Not her knocking again, or kicking down their stupid fake door, or insulting their stupid hick vests or their stupid braces or their stupid wall-less house. She only stood there blankly at front the door, seeing Rorschach patterns in whorls of the wood.

She swallowed. “Please.”

The door opened instantly. Mabel beamed at her. “Oh  _hiiiiii_  Pacifica! How nice of you to drop by!”

Pacifica sighed. “Hi Mabel.” 

“And what brings you to our happy fun-shack!” She wrapped her arm around Dipper and pulled him close. They both grinned, his smile crooked and hers full of metal and wires, but still eerily similar. 

“I was wondering if- maybe- I could like,  _not_  be at the mansion. Here. Or like,” she shrugged. “Whatever?”

“Pacifica,” Mabel said. “We would  _love_  to have you over.”

Dipper wiggled his hand so-so. “Love, warily civil, I’ve heard it both ways.”

“We just need to ask our Grunkle first- but I’m sure he’ll be totally okay with it!”

A gravely voice said: “Wait, what?”

“Back in the sec!” Mabel slammed the door.

  _Again_.

“Unbelievable.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WRW DV ULIXV LFIHVOEVH LM BLF, LI BLF LM FH?


End file.
